


What We Don't Talk About

by ellen_fremedon



Category: Star Trek: Reboot
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pon Farr, Reboot, ST:XI, Spock/Uhura - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-13
Updated: 2009-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_fremedon/pseuds/ellen_fremedon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What we don't talk about when we talk about Vulcan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Don't Talk About

**Author's Note:**

> So, the thing is, I _liked_ Spock/Uhura in the movie. I really want those two crazy kids to make a go of it!
> 
> ...and then I write things like this. I don't get it either.

Four months into her mission, _Enterprise_ calls at New Vulcan. Ambassador Sarek himself walks the landing party through the settlement, through the fruits of Vulcan industry and Vulcan persistence. There's no chance of the Federation allowing the colony to fail, of course, but Sarek intends new Vulcan to be more than a backwater; he shows them the foundations and cornerstones of the New City, courses of mortarless titanic masonry going up all around the cluster of pre-fabs and adobe huts that are already called the Old City. Uhura wanders among the giant construction robots, in Spock's wake if not on his arm, and though the brevity of the tour drives home the magnitude of their loss like nothing else has—all Vulcan, reduced to a morning's stroll!—still, the sense of hope and growth is almost palpable in the air. She's glad to have a chance to see this, Vulcan's rebirth, at its very beginning.

It's a smaller party that retires to the Ambassador's home, the Federation experts—no one is calling them aid workers, though that's what they all were in former postings—dispersing to the mines, the reservoir, the power plant. But even here, with just his shipmates, Spock defers to his father's politicking, restricting his small talk to questions about mutual acquaintances. It's Sarek's cue to talk up his people's accomplishments, and he does. They hear about an old schoolmate in mineral exploration, an old neighbor in recycling systems; Uhura's attention is wandering to dinner, and McCoy is openly inspecting the bookcases when Spock asks, "Is my cousin Surna not assigned to the irrigation project? I had thought to see him."

"Surna," says Sarek quellingly, "had pressing business."

"More pressing than a meeting with the Federation evaluators?" Spock raises an eyebrow, skeptical.

"He is married." Spock's face loses all expression. "Recently," Sarek clarifies. And if everyone else in the room weren't staring at Spock's discomfort, Uhura is sure that would have been the end of the conversation.

"I see," Spock says, and only someone who didn't know him could think he'd recovered his composure.

The captain knows him better than that. "Your cousin not the marrying type, Spock?"

Sarek's face is utterly expressionless. "He is... young," says Spock. "Young to marry."

"Well, that shouldn't be a surprise," McCoy ventures "Disaster makes people reconsider their priorities—reconsider them right into a baby boom, often as not."

Spock looks as though this had never occurred to him. "Perhaps you're right," he says, and changes the subject.

~*~

The next day, Uhura finds Spock in his father's garden with President T'Pau herself. "Surely," he is saying, "a suitable period of mourning for T'Pring—"

"—does not preclude thee from making another arrangement." T'Pau looks up, at Uhura's face if not into her eyes. "Thee may not dally in this, Spock." And however archaic her diction, Uhura has no doubt she knew exactly how the translator would render that word.

She dismisses Spock perfunctorily; Uhura follows. "Who is T'Pring?" Not was; that would be rude, and besides, the Vulcan existential copula has no past tense.

Spock is so closed down he looks ill. "My betrothed."

The fight is brief and predictable, and Uhura feels sickened by the things coming out of her mouth, jealous things she thought she would never say. But she never thought Spock would lie to her, either, even by omission. "Your father married a human," she says, even though they'd never talked about marriage, never looked that far ahead. "That wasn't arranged. Would you have fought to—" and suddenly she can't say _keep me_; she's too afraid that's exactly what Spock would have done. Kept her, his disreputable human mistress, while he went through whatever ceremonies his planet required with this woman. "Would you have married her? Whatever either of us wanted?"

Spock doesn't say no; and the fight is over. It's all over.

~*~

Except it's not, yet. She goes back to the ship, double- and triple-checks everything she can find an excuse to look at and spends the night on board. But she has to return planetside; and now that she's looking for it, she can see that they're having themselves a baby boom; everywhere she looks, she sees women with infants at the breast, or with rounding bellies. Mostly the young women, Spock's age and even younger; she doesn't see more than one or two older matrons with babies in tow. More invested in their older children, perhaps; or still grieving the ones they'd lost.

One would think more of the younger cohort would be grieving, too. Betrotheds. Spouses. Lovers, even. But there they are, pairing up like it's going out of fashion. She glares at young couples in the road outside the subspace relay center.

And waiting for her there is Ambassador Sarek. He's never been anything but coolly distant to her; but he's clearly heard from T'Pau about the scene in the garden, because he invites Uhura home for lunch and gives her the daughter-in-law treatment.

It creeps her out, truth to tell. And, credit where it's due, when Spock walks in on their conversation—once they've gone past her Academy grades and her career ambitions and into the number and health of her sisters' children—he looks utterly appalled. "Father." He nods to her. "Lieutenant. May I ask—"

"Join us, Spock." He takes a chair; he can hardly refuse, even though Sarek is clearly about thirty seconds away from asking Spock his intentions.

But then he turns back to her, and— sounding contrite for the first time in this whole mortifying conversation—says "Lieutenant Uhura. You must know I have nothing but respect for you, and your accomplishments. But I must inquire as your plans concerning my son."

"Ambassador Sarek. While I—" she looks at Spock's shuttered face and grasps for words; she's still _fucking_ angry at him. "While I esteem your son very highly, right now all of my plans involve my career."

"Devotion to duty is laudable in a young officer," Sarek allows.

"And you mean to marry off Spock before I'm even in a position to think about personal plans." And damn if she isn't just as angry _for_ Spock as at him now. But Spock's not standing up to him—Spock hasn't said a word in his own defense—and she's not going to fight this battle for him. "Good luck with that," she says. "And thank you for your hospitality. Sir."

~*~

The captain gives Spock hell, of course. Uhura comes upon them in the roofless ampitheater, the only completed edifice in the New City, and doesn't even have to suppress a scruple over eavesdropping; she hangs back in the shadows of the colonnade and listens.

"Explain again how your father's approving of your girlfriend is a problem."

"My father's approval is not the difficulty." Spock's hands are behind his back in a stiff parade rest.

"Then what is? Because what it looks like from here is your refusing to make things right with Uhura because suddenly you're not rebelling anymore. And I'm no saint, but even from where I'm standing, that looks pretty bad."

"I am aware of how it looks, Captain."

Kirk blinks. "That's it?"

"Regardless of the appearance it presents, I may not—it would be still more dishonorable of me to continue to allow myself a liaison that is unlikely to lead to a marriage."

"And you're sure of that—the unlikely part. Because you've discussed the matter so thoroughly."

"The lieutenant should not curtail her career for my sake." Kirk stared him down. "Nor should I neglect my... duties to Vulcan for hers. Regrettably."

"You mean your father wants grandchildren."

"I believe that is a common desire among parents."

"Spock. It seems to me you're making a lot of assumptions. Marriage and children don't necessarily go together. Especially not for you—or am I wrong in thinking that you'll need some... technological assistance, on that front?"

"It is true that hybrids are often sterile _in vivo_." Spock's shoulders are even tenser.

"Then—Spock. What is it you're not telling me?"

His back is to her; Uhura can't see the look he gives the Captain. But she sees Kirk's eyes widen, even before she hears the weariness in Spock's voice. "Any more than I have told you already, Jim."

Kirk paces; Spock barely moves, but Uhura can see him tracking Kirk's movement, in the lines of his shoulders under the blue tunic. "Will you be leaving be leaving Starfleet?" he says. "When you find that liaison leading to marriage?"

And it's this, of everything, that makes Spock's shoulders slump. "I don't know," he says. "I hope not."

~*~

"I don't want to hear it, Spock." She's leaning on the city wall, watching the robots: freight haulers driving themselves up from the quarries; robot excavators extending irrigation canals alongside the new green fields. Closer to the city, the first crop of grain on this planet is ripe. In that field, Vulcans walk behind the robot combine; it only leaves a handful of seed for gleaning, but there'll be a ceremony over that handful later.

"Nyota—"

"No." She folds her arms and studies him; he has the good grace to look uncomfortable. "If I'd known you were expected to marry someone else, I'd still have jumped you, you know. But you didn't tell me anything— you assumed that I'd get tired of us—or else you assumed that you could just walk away from me no matter what I felt." She turns back to the landscape: Gleaners with Robot, how deliciously apt. "I wouldn't have minded being your youthful indiscretion, Spock, but I fucking well mind being taken for granted."

"Nyota," he begins again. "I did indeed make several faulty assumptions. I assumed…" She's never seen him choose his words with so much care. "I assumed that, due to my ancestry, I might not ever be compelled to marry. I dare not assume that any longer."

She considers this. "Human blood doesn't matter so much now?" Now that you’re an endangered species, she doesn't say; now that the casual eugenics of your parents' generation is a luxury?

Spock looks out at the cropland, Vulcan grasses she doesn't recognize, ripening next to Terran ones she does: millet, teff, winter wheat. "Perhaps." Even admitting the possibility roughens his voice.

She's still angry. She's going to stay that way. But she can't stand seeing him like this. "Spock. You don't live here. You don't have to follow the rules. If you don't want children, you _shouldn't_ have them; if you don't want a marriage—"

"Nyota, what I want is not at issue."

"Like hell it's not! You didn't want to marry T'Pring—you just said so, or as good as. How do you expect the next bride your father picks out for you to be any different?"

She can see the furrow between his eyebrows deepen, hard as he tries to keep his face schooled. "I cannot explain."

"You can try."

"No. I cannot." He leans on his forearms on the low stone wall and hangs his head—his control must be in tatters if he has to hide his face from her. "All I can say, is that there are so few ways left to be Vulcan." He waves one hand at the fields, the irrigation ditches, the construction cranes, the white sky. "This is… such a tiny fraction of what we once had. And every bit of it is now precious. Every rite. Every custom, even those I once abhorred, I must now cherish, as something rare, and fragile. And in these circumstances, I find that contingencies I once contemplated only with dismay, I may now look upon as…" He lifts his face, still searching for the word, and dismay is all Uhura sees there, that and fear, but Spock continues, "as opportunities to partake in the continuity of Vulcan tradition." He turns away again, looking like a man led to the gallows. "Do you understand?"

Put it that way, and she does. "I understand well enough. I don't approve. You're setting yourself up to make someone else as unhappy as you're going to be, and I can't think you want that."

He lifts one hand almost to her face, but does not touch her. "This is not about wanting, Nyota." But it is, in every schooled line of his face, every careful inflection of his voice.

"Let me know when it is," she says. And walks away, knowing that he won't follow.


End file.
